Earl Wolff back to bolster secondary

PHILADELPHIA — Eagles safety Earl Wolff is back just in time to bolster a secondary facing its biggest challenge of the season this Sunday.

So is Patrick Chung, the slumping teammate Wolff wrested the starting job from. And they’re going to rotate every few series, unless defensive coordinator Bill Davis strays from his plans, while Wolff gets re-acclimated to football after five weeks rehabbing a hyper-extended knee.

Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis would rather not have to throw Wolff at the Chicago Bears, who average 29 points, second in the league.

But Davis’ options are limited. Veteran safeties Kurt Coleman (hamstring) and Colt Anderson (knee) are out this week and Chung has been a liability. The Eagles are so desperate they signed safety Kealan Johnson off their practice squad.

“They’ve got a great offense,” Wolff said of the Bears. “Great running back and great receivers that can make plays in the air and all over the field. Basically we have a tough challenge. But we’re playing in the Linc. We have home field advantage.”

Forget for a moment the playoff implications. Just say both the Eagles and the Bears top their respective divisions but haven’t clinched playoff berths, much less beneficial seedings.

If you’re into super-sized offenses, the Bears are your kind of team. From wide receivers Alshon Jeffery (6-3, 216) and Brandon Marshall (6-4, 230) to tight end Martellus Bennett (6-6, 265) and running back Matt Forte (6-1, 218), this unite truly resonates with the Monsters of the Midway moniker. Even quarterback Jay Cutler (6-3, 220) has size. Ditto head coach Marc Trestman.

The Bears are as talented as they are big.

If you were impressed the Eagles had a 1,000-yard rusher in LeSean McCoy and a 1,000-yard receiver in DeSean Jackson, you’ll want to applaud what the Bears have going. That would be two 1,000-yard receivers in Jeffery (1,265, 7 TDs) and Marshall (1,185, 10 TDs) and a 1,000-yard rusher in Forte (7 TDs).

Eagles cornerback Cary Williams is duly impressed. At the same time Williams had no problem suggesting the Bears will be facing a real defense this week. The previous two weeks the Bears got big numbers against the defenseless Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be that easy as it was, not for the last couple weeks,” Williams said. “We did get out of character last week but I think we learned from those mistakes and our character still is going to be the same. We’re going to still play the game with emotion. We have a lot of guys that have passion and I don’t think that passion is going to change our or identity is going to change. I see us getting better and playing a little bit smarter.”

The Eagles sure couldn’t keep the lowly Minnesota Vikings for stamping them for 21 fourth-quarter points in what became a 48-30 defeat.

Chung wasn’t the only Eagles defender to struggle. But when Chung wasn’t misreading receivers, most notably the Vikings’ Greg Jennings on a 57-yard catch-and-run for a score, he was collecting penalties. Chung was flagged twice in the game, once for hitting a runner out of bounds.

Davis expects Chung to bounce back with his best game of the season. The coach also expects to get relief from Wolff.

“He was starting to really show some play making ability, getting some of those rookie mistakes out,” Davis said. “When you play rookies, you get more mistakes. More volume than they’ve ever been used to. He got injured and has been out for a while. We have to crawl him back into the mix as we go.”

The Eagles have their work cut out. It’s an uphill fight taking on the Bears.